Fed up with the Alliance for Change party he supported during the 2015 General Elections, West Bank Demerara businessman Sasenarine Shewnarain yesterday publicly endorsed the newly formed Change Guyana Party headed by businessman Robert Badal.
Change Guyana also yesterday received an endorsement from young business entrepreneur Tonainah ‘Ash’ Samaroo who said that she too saw the vision the party has and believes in the message, stance and programme for accelerating the development of Guyana.
Shewnarain, the Aracari Resort and Roraima Trust & Investment Inc owner said he was fed up with how the country is being governed and believes that there has to be a movement that sees people being empowered to decide what is best for them.
“At this point right now, I feel it is incumbent upon me; a duty to endorse the Change Guyana party as a right choice, right now for Guyanese,” he said.
“Change Guyana Party is about ‘Guyana is for Guyanese’. We are looking for true Guyanese, not Afro Guyanese, Indo Guyanese, Amerindian …We should be proud to say we are Guaynese and the Change Guyana party wants to get people to change their thinking. They have to be first Guyanese then anything afterwards. You have to love Guyana and you will act in a way and forget race and act to preserve Guyana. It is by solving these problems that we will be able to move the country from having great potential to realizing its great potential. We have to free the people to govern themselves and decide for themselves what is good for them. Instead of us telling them, through a select free,” Shewnarain said.
In her endorsement speech, Samaroo said, “Mr. Badal has mentioned that he is fed up of seeing the suffering and so am I. Mr. Nigel (Hinds, prime ministerial candidate}, is very intelligent and I admire him and believe that he has strategic plans that could help move our country forward…Today we should write history ourselves.”
Change Guyana’s presidential candidate Badal was also a supporter of the APNU+AFC coalition in 2015. He explained that relationship in an interview with this newspaper. “If you can recall in 2015, I supported a change, after 23 years of successive PPP/C administrations. During that period, the leaders within the PPP had gotten so abusive, so intimidating, so frustrating for business that it was becoming untenable. The real businessmen in Guyana were marginalized and those that depended on government contracts were called the emerging private sector. So there was a little hatred for the business people that came through all the years, created value, exported, employed people and earned foreign exchange. The fact that one administration being in office for 23 years I found a bit distasteful. It was as if no one else had the talent to do it and so I supported the change,” he said.
“I was never a member of any political party. I was never a member of AFC, never a member of the coalition. I supported the change financially and advised them. After that change was effected I had no part or association with politics again,” he added.
Asked how long after the APNU+AFC got into office that he stopped giving support to them, Badal had replied, “That is not a material question for this interview. I am not a member and I would answer no further questions on that”.
“I was never a supporter, never a member other than to launch an additional option for the people of Guyana in 2015,” he added.
State-owned businesses
Meanwhile, yesterday he highlighted what he believes is the failure of both PPP/C and the APNU+AFC coalition to manage state-owned businesses.
“In 2017 and 2018 GuySuCo, GPL, Guyoil, GNSC and NIS recorded a $28B deficit. In the past ten years $22B in support was extended to GPL and $77B to GuySuCo. Interim results of 2019 shows a deficit of around $4B at GPL… The crying question is where and when would this all end?” he asked.
“Mismanagement, incompetence and political interference at all levels, including board appointments will continue to result in losses to the detriment of all Guyanese. Proceeds from oil would be used to hide such mismanagement going forward,” he added.
He said that one does not have to go far to see the state of GuySuCo and stressed that successive PPP administrations failed to take decisive action to restructure the corporation and diversify its business, when it was clear since the early 1990s that such was urgent given the planned withdrawal of preferential market access to Europe and the USA. “Political appointments to management and the Board of Directors stripped the corporation of professional and competent management and decision making,” he said.
“Perhaps the biggest blunder was the decision of the then Jagdeo administration to invest US$200M on a new factory at Skeldon instead of spending a fraction of this amount to improve efficiencies at all other sugar factories. This decision effectively made GuySuCo bankrupt. Why would we invest US$200M on sugar when all countries in the region were closing their Sugar factories?” he added.
Equally failing sugar workers and the industry, according to Badal is the APNU+AFC as its decision to close the Rose Hall, Enmore and Wales sugar estates without an investor is equally damaging. “They had three years after inauguration to find investors but their method of the SPU (Special Project Unit) at NICIL, instead of a Wall Street firm with the international reach and experience, failed,” he stressed.
He said that instead of allotting sugar cane lands at Wales to displaced sugar workers to facilitate their adjustment away from employment in sugar, “thousands of acres were given to friends of the political elites. Politics have destroyed the livelihood of thousands of sugar and Bauxite workers, and leave those communities destitute,” Badal said.
Change Guyana, according to Badal will ensure that “All corporations will be returned to Profitability by independent, professional management.”
Workers displaced at Rose Hall, Enmore and Wales would be allotted lands to start their own agricultural business and technical, product development and marketing support would be provided. “We would make these workers entrepreneurs instead of the back breaking work on sugar estates,” he said.
A privatization policy will also be crafted. “Political interference, political appointments, lack of a clear strategy, absence of visionary leadership and oversight, contributed to the decline of State corporations with consequences for job sustainability, higher taxation and Poverty. The $100B in support [to state owned companies] that exerted a huge burden on taxpayers. Were these Corporations profitably run, they could have financed two bridges across the Demerara River, build a smart electricity grid for GPL to end blackouts, build state-of-the-art Hospitals and road networks across Guyana,” Badal said.
